A Whole Lotta Frittata

Do you all remember my pan? My sturdy, strong, beautifully seasoned cast iron frying pan? The pan with all that meaning and history. The pan I burned to bits about this time last year.

Yeah, that one.

I saved it. I scrubbed and I scraped and I seasoned, and then I seasoned again. I cooked a mountain of bacon (and created a true baconophile in my Aspie).

And I saved it.

Now it is making frittatas. Perfect, evenly cooked, gorgeously browned frittatas.

A few weeks ago, the family of my amazing au pair came to visit us from her home country of Belgium. We spent a lot of time with them while they were here. We had them over for dinner one night (check the Fast, Fake-Baked Ziti recipe on the right – it’s my go-to dinner for events like this because everyone, and I mean everyone, loves it). We went sightseeing with them. And we meant to go to the zoo with them. Except that it was insanely hot, the air quality was bad, and my heat-strokey Aspie and my formerly asthmatic diva would have melted.

So I kept them air conditioned, and we invited our extended Belgian family over for brunch the next day instead.

I didn’t have time to shop, so I just used what I had. Two-thirds of a loaf of Italian bread and a handful of eggs, a drop of vanilla and some cinnamon made a nice little French toast.

I tossed a fruit salad. I brewed some iced tea.

And I made a frittata. A clove of garlic, half an onion. A handful of baby tomatoes, seeded and diced. Six little balls of fresh mozzarella, quartered. Several pretty green basil leaves. And, when it was ready for the broiler, a handful of freshly grated asiago sprinkled over the top.

Um, yeah, so I keep a fairly well-stocked kitchen.

My little frittata was yummy. So yummy that I made the same thing the next day for a house guest who had never had breakfast in bed. Everyone deserves breakfast in bed, dontcha think?

Look. Pictures.
































That pan is a wonder. Not only did it cook up a stunningly gorgeous and tasty concoction of eggy goodness, practically by itself (yes, my pan is that good). But it didn’t stick. Not even a little bit. Clean-up was easy-peasy.

I love that pan.

Go get your own pan, season the hell out of it, then make a frittata. It will make you happy.

Rosemary’s Caprese Frittata

• 1 8” cast iron fry pan
• 6 eggs
• A dollop of milk (presuming milk can dollop)
• 1 T butter
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ½ medium onion, diced
• 4 small tomatoes, seeded and diced
• 12 or so leaves of fresh basil, torn
• 6 balls of the little bitty mozzarella (if you know what they’re called, feel free to comment!)
• ¼ - ½ cup grated asiago or parmesan

In a mixing bowl, whip eggs and milk until frothy. Turn on the broiler. Heat your cast iron over medium heat. Add the butter. When the butter melts, sauté the garlic and onions until translucent. Add the tomatoes and basil and cook for a minute or two longer to bring out their flavor. Even out the ingredients across the pan, then pour the eggs over the top. Drop in the quartered mozzarella balls. Leave that pan alone until the eggs have generally set (the top of the frittata will still be very wet), then sprinkle the asiago over the top and put the whole thing under the broiler immediately. Let it brown. Cut in the pan and serve in tidy little wedges. Or messy ones, if that’s your druther.

Do not serve with ketchup. That would be sacrilege.

The Done List: August 22

Another Done List, mostly because I am at this point far too tired to stand up and figured I could just blog instead. I'm hoping a list of accomplishments will go a long way toward improving my irritable disposition.

In the past 24 hours I have:

• Earned a living
• Cleaned a lovely pile of grassy dog vomit off the kitchen floor
  
• Assisted old, tired, wheezy dog in quest for water, ice, and a lift up the stairs
• Cleaned out and emptied minivan and assisted younger sister and her boyfriend in their move to DC (yay!)
• Paid people to clean my house ... dog hair now under control for the next day or two
  
• Enjoyed conversations with not one but two genuine girlfriends
  
• Washed two slipcovers and super-cleaned sofa peed on by redhead during surprise nap
• Visited elementary school to drop off vacation postcards and find out where diva and her friends are placed for school starting Monday
• Organized $167 of school supplies into appropriate piles and placed into backpacks
• Cleaned up playroom in preparation for double sleepover ... a task slightly more Herculean than usual because the playroom was a storehouse for the stuff owned by said little sister (yay!)
  
• Successfully entertained and put to bed two-thirds more children than usual
• Successfully organized more than 100 11- and 12-year-old boys into (I hope) evenly matched soccer teams and only pissed off two coaches in the process
• When I figured out I did not actually have enough coaches for all seven soccer teams, I creatively put all four assistant coach volunteers into one team along with two past coaches and told them to work it out amongst themselves ... lets hope that one doesn't blow up in my face
  
• Squeezed in two and a half hours of sleep - and did not throttle my lovable Aspie when he woke everyone up at 6:00 a.m. (after 10:00 p.m. bedtime) so that he could take best advantage of his sleepover
• Seasoned critically injured cast iron pan and then restored it further with the healing properties of bacon - bad for the arteries, great for the pan
  
• Made massive breakfast of said bacon, scrambled eggs, raisin toast and bananas that was, quite literally, INHALED by the five children in residence
• Managed to sneak a piece of toast away from the ravenous hordes so I could have something to eat, too
• Made and drank life-giving coffee
  

I'm now going to go dress myself - assuming I can remember how - and take all these lovely children home before hitting the grocery store, making a picnic, taking diva and others to the park for brownies meet and greet and then driving to another state to pick up lovely gift of home furnishings from an old friend. Even better, we get to enjoy some social & cooking time afterward. Yay!

Tonight? Melatonin, baby. I'm gettin' me some sleep.

Fear of Flying

I love my cast iron. I love it almost as much as I hate to fly. And I really hate to fly.

On Tuesday, these two facts collided.

On Tuesday, I set fire to my favorite cast iron pan. Real fire. Orange flames leaping toward the ceiling. Smoke alarms screaming madly all over the house. In other words, a scary fire. A little one. But scary nevertheless.

The fire started because I'm afraid to fly. In the face of that fear, my everyday insomnia had become a big hairy insomnia monster. Lack of sleep is normal for me. But lack of sleep to that degree? It'd make Einstein stupid.

The fire started because I couldn't find my Xanax. Xanax is the miracle that makes flying possible. Without it, I get panic attacks and can't even set foot on a plane. I was getting on a plane in 12 hours, and I couldn't find my Xanax. My brain had stopped cold.

But mostly, the fire started because I love my pan.

This pan, it's a simple 12-inch skillet. My grandfather made a gift of just such a skillet to my mom when she left home for college in the early 1960s. My mom gave that same skillet to me in 1985, when I moved into my first apartment. And I gave that skillet to my sister when she moved into her first place all by her lonesome.

My sister knew just how much I missed that skillet. So she took the time to find me a new one. She seasoned it lovingly until it attained that black patina good cast iron gets when it's properly cared for. And then she gave it to me. Twin skillets, one for me, one for her.

We don't have twin skillets anymore.

Late Tuesday, on a quest to feed the insomnia monster, I set a pot of water on the stove to boil for noodles. I turned the burner on high and went upstairs to pack. Thing is, I turned on the wrong burner. I turned on the burner under my beautiful - and very empty - cast iron skillet. When I came back to check on my water, the bottom of that beautiful skillet was peeling and gray and ugly.

My first thought? My poor pan! It needs oil!

You can see how sleep deprivation and panic may have played a role here. In my normal, well-rested state, I can tell you, point of fact, that if you pour oil into a superheated skillet, it will light up like a giant fireball.

But that night? That night all I could think about was my beautiful pan. I didn't turn off the stove. I didn't let the pan cool. No, I pulled out my big bottle of Trader Joe's cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil and poured a good quarter cup into that hot cast iron frying pan sitting on a glowing red electric burner set to HIGH.

Moments later that pan exploded into flame. Gosh, what a surprise that was, eh?

I'm damn lucky the whole bottle of oil didn't explode in my hand. I'm luckier still that the part of my brain saying "Oh shit, better put that burning skillet of oil into the sink and pour water on it" got stuck on "Oh shit," so I didn't act on the thought. Instead, I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the cabinet next to the stove. I heard some voice in my head - I think it may have been Dick Van Dyke's - telling me to pull the pin and shoot. So I pulled the pin, and I put that damn fire out.

The oil splattered. It burned the crap out of one of my fingers and singed my kitchen floor. My formerly white cabinets are a dingy, smoky gray. My kitchen is covered in extinguisher dust. And my poor, beautiful, well-loved skillet is sitting in the sink, a ruined, greasy, extinguished mess.

That's all waiting for me when I get home.

The good news? I found the Xanax. I got on the plane. I got off the plane. And then I got a great big hug from my dad.

I think that makes it all better.